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CSB says employees should be part of accident investigations to promote facility safety

| March 18, 2012 | 0 Comments
Washington, DC, March 7, 2012 — The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) announced today that it has developed a new policy on employee participation in investigations that the Board hopes will enhance the vital role played by plant workers in determining root causes of incidents and promoting facility safety. The policy, which was approved by a unanimous 3-0 vote of the Board on February 27, follows a roundtable involving accident victims, family members, and worker representatives the CSB convened in 2011.
The new policy implements a key provision of the CSB enabling statute at 42 U.S.C. § 7412(r)(6)(L), which provides that employees and their representatives have similar rights in CSB accident investigations as they do during OSHA inspections under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.
CSB Chairperson Dr. Rafael Moure-Eraso said, “The new employee participation guidance is an important milestone for the CSB, as we continue to strengthen our investigative processes. The CSB has already been following a number of the elements of the policy in past and ongoing investigations, but the new policy will assure uniformity and increased employee participation at sites across the country.”
The ten key elements of the new policy include:
(1)          If the CSB initiates an investigation at a union-represented site, the CSB will promptly identify and notify facility unions of its plans to investigate. At non-union sites, the CSB will seek to identify other employee representatives, such as employee members of any established Health and Safety Committee, or other employee representatives, if possible.
(2)          The CSB will seek participation by contract employees and their representatives, similar to facility employees.
(3)          The CSB will establish direct, face-to-face communications with employee representatives from the outset of its investigations.
(4)          The CSB will take measures to avoid interference by any party with the proper exercise of employee participation.
(5)          CSB investigators will allow and encourage employee representatives to accompany the CSB team during site inspections and tours. Such participation is often critical for understanding complex processes and learning of important safety concerns and hazards.
(6)          Where necessary to obtain information, CSB investigators will conduct separate meetings with employee representatives.
(7)          During CSB interviews, any non-supervisory employee may be accompanied by another non-supervisory employee, a personal attorney, or a family member as described in 40 CFR 1610.
(8)          The CSB will provide employee representatives with the opportunity to review and comment upon evidence and equipment testing protocols and to observe testing, similar to the opportunities for companies and other parties. Employee representatives will also have access to any test results, to an extent equivalent to other parties.
(9)          The CSB will provide employee representatives with the opportunity to review and comment on the factual accuracy of CSB reports, recommendations, and interim statements of findings prior to public release, to a degree equivalent to any opportunities provided to company representatives.
(10)      The CSB will monitor the implementation of the policy to ensure that participation by facility employees and representatives in CSB investigations does not result in prohibited whistleblower retaliation under 42 USC § 7622. Documented instances of retaliation will be referred to appropriate federal enforcement agencies.
“Over the next few months, the CSB plans to develop a brochure for employees as well as a new web page summarizing the new policy,” Dr. Moure-Eraso said. “Our goal is effective employee participation from the first day of an investigation right through to our final report.  No one knows more about the day-to-day operations at a plant than the workers who go there every day in the hope of safely earning a living.  We cannot fully succeed in our mission without their help.”

Fieldbus and Safety Instrumented Systems-implementing Safety Instrumented Functions in Fieldbus

| December 19, 2011 | 0 Comments

Miami Dec 19, 2011- There has been a lot of buzz lately about Safety Instrumented Systems utilizing Fieldbus technology, or rather having Fieldbus systems also have Safety Instrumented System functionality. As those of you in the process industries probably know, Safety Instrumented Systems are special automation and control systems that ensure that plants having hazardous processes will be adequately protected and can be shut down safely in case of any process upsets or untoward incidents. Safety Instrumented Systems protect people, assets and the environment, in case of unwanted deviations, failures of the main process control system or equipment and other undesirable and unplanned events. Safety Instrumented Systems (known as SIS for short) are also called by other names such as Safety Shutdown Systems, Emergency Shutdown Systems (ESD) and similar terms.

Till recently, the SIS and the main plant automation systems (also known as BPCS-Basic Process Control Systems, which could be DCS or PLC based systems) used to be completely separate systems. The hardware, software and programming of both systems (BPCS and SIS) used to be totally different, like chalk and cheese. Later on, we began to see the introduction of integrated BPCS-SIS systems, where the BPCS and SIS were not totally different, but shared some of the hardware, user interface, communications network, etc. Though the programming was similar, the SIS programming was kept secure and separate with the aid of special functions in software.

Now we are seeing an even more integrated approach, in Fieldbus systems. For example FOUNDATION Fieldbus (which is one of the many Fieldbus protocols in use today) has introduced special Safety Instrumented Functions, that could be implemented in FOUNDATION Fieldbus based systems. They call this FF-SIF and this concept was presented in the FOUNDATION Fieldbus general assemby held sometime back. It is being done in a pilot project in Saudi Aramco at their Dhahran site. FOUNDATION Fieldbus recently announced that updated device development solutions for its Foundation Fieldbus for Safety Instrumented Functions (FF-SIF) technology are available. The new release includes the FF-SIF Technical Specification, Foundation for SIF Interoperability Test Kit (SIF ITK), and DD Library.

As many of you know, Fieldbus technology is rapidly gaining ground in the process industries and if the FF-SIF concept is accepted by user industries, it will lend a new meaning to the word “integrated” BPCS-SIS. In fact the distinction will get blurred. What FF-SIF proposes is to have Safety Instrumented Function blocks that will be resident in the smart devices in the field (like a humble pressure transmitter for instance) and thus can be used to implement Safety functions.This means that plants who decide to implement Fieldbus even on a smaller scale can have the power of a Safety Instrumented System, without paying a steep price for creating a separate system, programming, wiring, etc,etc. All they have to do is to utilize the SIF blocks that will presumably be available.  Since the user industries main aim is to implement Safety functions in an effective manner, this seems to be a good deal for them.

If all this sounds like being too complicated, you need not worry. Simply download the Fieldbus training course from Abhisam Software that we hear is being released in Q1 of 2012 and you will be fine, fully updated and conversant with all this new technology.

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